


Bumps in the Night

by iLurked



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Fantasy AU, Mates, Urban Fantasy, Werewolfs and Magic, i don't know how to tag, send help
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-09-19 05:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9419816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iLurked/pseuds/iLurked
Summary: Oliver's oldest and best-kept secret was that, as far back as he could remember, there had always been a beast inside of him, an entity not entirely separate from, but independent of, him. The beast was wild and unruly and vengeful, until it met the woman with the blond hair and the glasses. AU. Fantasy.





	1. My Name is Oliver Queen

Oliver Queen was a man steeped in secrets.

His oldest and best-kept secret was that, as far back as Oliver could remember, there had always been a beast inside of him.

As a toddler, he was taught by his mother, his teachers, and his Raisa to be kind to others, to share, to be respectful; but the beast inside him wanted to dominate, to take, to prove that he was the strongest. As a six-year old boy, he was told by a Sunday School teacher that forgiveness was divine after he was pushed down by an older boy at the church playground; his beast, however, demanded retribution so he waited for his chance and, when it came, pushed the offending boy down the seesaw. As a young adult, Oliver was expected to love and to be faithful to only one woman, but the beast inside him wanted to pursue and to take, and once successful, to move on to the next conquest.

Because it was often easier to give in to the urges of the beast, a young Oliver was described by his elders as strong-willed, his conduct often excused as acting out as a result of his parents' failure to give him boundaries. As he grew older, his often bizarre behaviors were depicted as the drunken antics of a typical trust fund baby. In reality, alcohol had almost no effect on him; it was merely the beast inside of him coming out to play.

When Oliver was five years old, his mother was called to school after he punched and bit a classmate. On their way home, Oliver told his mother that his classmate deserved it because he stole not only Oliver's seat in recess, but also Oliver's best friend, Tommy. Oliver added that he had no choice because the beast inside made him do it. Oliver was surprised when his usually indulgent mother looked like she swallowed lemons. Instead of telling him it was alright, his mom told him that the beast was just his imagination and to not tell anyone else, not even Tommy, of what he told her. It was the first time Oliver realized that not everyone had a beast inside of them. In fact, he was the only one.

It was perhaps because of the beast that Oliver was stronger and faster than everyone he knew. The beast also gifted him with preternatural senses of sight, hearing, and smell. Teenaged Oliver, testing the scope of his budding strength, instigated many barroom brawls and he had never been bested.

It was the beast that saved Oliver after he washed up on the shores of Purgatory with the remains of his father. Oliver the man wanted to die, but the beast refused to let him. When Oliver the man gave up and gave reign to the beast, the latter not only survived, it flourished.

In some aspects, being in Purgatory brought the beast, and resultantly Oliver, relief. It was on that island that Oliver discovered other people like him. While the they did not have beasts inside them, they were different enough to be considered not normal. It was under their tutelage that the beast was able to reach its full potential. It learned how to hunt, to kill, to finally stop holding back.

Unfortunately, it was also on the island that Oliver was exposed for the first time to the true evil in the world.

And then, one night, Oliver Queen slept in Purgatory and woke up in Hell.

Hell was a cramped, windowless cell where he was imprisoned, his hands and feet manacled against stone walls.

Hell was the dark, the loneliness, the curtailment of his freedom.

Hell was also a bright, sterile room where he was taken for hours on end, where he was pricked, poked, prodded, and, at one time, all but vivisected.

Hell was the nameless, silent people in lab coats whose cold, impersonal hands mutilated his body.

His days that bled into nights were long and monotonous. His company was no one but himself and the wild, uncontrollable beast inside him that snapped and growled, demanding the slow and painful death of everyone involved in his current predicament.

And one night, after an inordinate amount of time in hell, Oliver regained consciousness abruptly. A hard-learned lesson on the island made him feign sleep. Through closed eyes, he made use of his other senses, senses which had sharpened and strengthened the longer he was in captivity, to determine what had awakened him.

He was on his feet, held upright by the manacles on his wrist, telling him that he was inside his cell, and not in the laboratory. There was, however, no chemicals being pumped in the vent, chemicals which caused him unnatural sleep, the standard procedure whenever he was to be transferred from his cell to the labs.

He heard no other heartbeat but his, no other scent but himself, felt no other being in his cell.

Then, he heard an incredulous, “Oliver?”

His eyes flew open, his training no match for his surprise at hearing the voice inside his cell.

“T-tommy?” Oliver blinked furiously, convinced that he was beginning to see things, slowly starting to lose his mind at his monotonous incarceration broken only by painful torture.

Because scant inches before him stood his best friend, a man he thought he had left thousands of miles back home in Starling City.

Tommy Merlyn reached out and tried to remove the manacles from Oliver's wrists, but instead of feeling Tommy's hands, Oliver's wrists felt cold and hot at the same time.

“Damn,” Tommy muttered. “I forgot about that.”

Oliver's eyes widened when he realized that Tommy Merlyn was blurry at the edges, as if he was still unformed. And when he really looked at him, Oliver realized that he could see the door to his cell through Tommy's transparent body.

His first thought was that the scientists must have pumped a hallucinogenic through the vents of his cell, making him imagine that help had come. He would not put it past them to experiment the effects of drugs on his body, after everything else that they had done to him; either that, or that he was still dreaming. Those were the only explanations he could think of why he seemed to be haunted by Tommy's ghost when he was fairly certain that his best friend was still hale and whole back home.

“W-what's going on?” Oliver's voice was rough with disuse.

“I'll explain later,” Tommy told him. “Just hold on for a bit, I have to call for help.”

Further convincing Oliver of his hallucinogenic theory, he saw Tommy leave the cell by phasing through the walls of his cell.

After a few minutes, he heard a quick, resolute patter of feet moving closer and closer before stopping just outside of the cell. Numerous clicks preceded the beep that indicated the disengaging of the locks of Oliver's cell.

Then, slowly, carefully, the doors creaked open.

The scent hit him first: the fresh, crisp fragrance of the outdoors coupled with the calming aroma of jasmine. The former odor intoxicated the caged beast even as the latter, contrarily, soothed it.

A blonde woman with huge glasses who stood no taller than his shoulders took a few tentative steps inside, clutching a tablet against her chest like it was a lifeline.

That was all it took for Oliver's world to tilt on its axis.

Like the proverbial music that tamed the savage beast, the newcomer's voice soothed the beast inside Oliver even as as it strained and demanded and insisted to draw nearer to her.

 _Mine_.

Thoughts of Tommy immediately dissipated; the beast in him was fully consumed with the woman standing in front of him. It was as if it had found the thing it did not know it was looking for all its life.

The woman walked further inside the cell, her head swiveling. She did not notice Oliver yet because he stood motionless, chained, at the darkest corner of the room.

“Hello?” She called out. Then, much quieter, “I don't see him, Spartan. And my shoes are sticking on the floor.”

 _Mine_.

Afraid that the woman would leave, Oliver rattled the chains of his manacles.

“Hold on. Something moved in the corner. I hope it's not a rat.”

Blinding lights suddenly shone on Oliver's face. He groaned, his very sensitive eyes protesting the stimulant.

“I found him!” She gasped.

Then, to the beast's delight and Oliver's amusement, the woman continued talking as she gingerly moved towards Oliver. “My name's Overwatch. It's not my real name, obviously. I'm not here to hurt you. I'm with ARGUS, sort of. I'm kinda ARGUS adjacent, to be honest. Well, maybe not even that. I'm with Dig, and Dig's with Lyla, and Lyla's with ARGUS. So that would make me ARGUS adjacent-adjacent. Or an independent contractor. Hmm. An independent contractor. I like the sound of that. My name's Overwatch and I'm an independent contractor.”

At the end of her statement, Oliver found himself face to face with Overwatch, not her real name, independent contractor. The beast gave a sigh of relief with her finally within reach, that is, if Olive could reach (but he couldn't, on account of the manacles).

She smiled. “Hi.”

 _Mine_.

Oliver the man was immediately charmed. He gave her a smile, something he thought he had already forgotten to do after everything that had happened in the past five years. For the first time in a long, long while, he was bathed in sunshine despite still being trapped inside his cell.

“You're out of luck, sir,” she told him as she examined his manacles. “I could hack the heck out of electronic doors but picking locks are not within my skill set. We'll have to wait for backup.”

As if on cue, Oliver heard two sets of footsteps moving closer. A few minutes later, two huge masked men entered the cells with guns aimed at its occupants.

Overwatch gasped and stepped in front of Oliver, as if to shield him from the men.

“Get the girl!” The bigger man told his companion.

“I take it they're not backup?” Oliver asked, voice rusty from disuse, surprising not only the woman, but himself with his quip.

“Spartan?” She ignored him, choosing to address her comms, which Oliver noticed were tucked neatly inside her ear. “A little help?”

“Hold on,” came the reply, now near enough for Oliver's preternatural hearing to hear. “I'm five minutes out.”

“I don't think we have five minutes.”

“Hey, you!” The bigger man glared at Overwatch. “Who are you talking to?”

When Overwatch did not immediately reply, the other man stepped closer and grabbed her by the arms.

“Do not touch her.” Oliver growled at him, vowing that that would be the last mistake the man would make in his life.

“Yeah?” The man's eyebrows quirked in amusement. “Or what?”

That was the precise moment when Oliver and the beast became one.

With a mighty roar, Oliver yanked against his bonds and felt the chains around his wrists give way. Once his hands were free, Oliver violently pulled out the chains on his feet from the wall.

He took a moment to relish his freedom before the beast took over completely, and then Oliver suffered pain unlike anything he had ever felt in his life.

He roared as his bones were fused and severed several times over. His skin felt on fire as it stretched and altered. He was helpless as he slowly dropped on all fours.

His last thought as a man was that if he survived tonight, he would no longer be derisive of his younger sister's favorite books about sparkly vampires.

And then, Oliver Queen became someone else; he became something else.

The beast, now out of the shell that was the body of Oliver Queen, roared its fury.


	2. The Secret Life of Felicity Smoak

Felicity Smoak did not live a charmed life. No; she, in fact, lived the opposite.

Felicity was born to a cocktail waitress and a small-time crook, the latter of whom took off as soon as his daughter could walk.

While Felicity was left with a mother who loved her very much (which was much more than some people have), Donna Smoak was more absent than present. Felicity's advanced classes, clubs, projects, and labs cost a not insignificant amount of money so Donna, determined to give her little girl all the advantages in the world despite being a single mother, worked two, sometimes three, jobs and picked up all the available extra shifts that came her way. Felicity was left in the company of old neighbors or her mother's exasperated friends and, when she was a little older, she was left all by herself. Moreover, her mother, while wildly supportive of Felicity's interests, failed to understand her love of computers, leading Felicity to think (erroneously, she would later discover) that her mother preferred a daughter who was into clothes and makeup and boys.

Felicity's attempt to look for acceptance and understanding from her schoolmates crashed and burned.

Despite being raised in the fantastical and diverse world of Las Vegas, Felicity was still considered an oddity. Acquiring a vocabulary that far outstripped other kids in her age group, she was considered eccentric and annoying. She talked too much, asked too many questions, and was into everything. When she was in first grade, the television in their classroom conked out. Curious and wanting to help, Felicity took apart the broken television while everyone else was in recess. A horrified teacher found Felicity elbow deep in electronic guts and deemed her a troublemaker, a moniker that stuck until she was in high school.

Felicity, despite her best efforts to make friends, was lonely. That was, until a teacher took pity on her and allowed her to hang out in the computer labs during lunch period. It was then that she found solace in her tech, in her computers, and in her online friends, who did not care if she was odd or talked too much or asked too many questions. With each friend that she found online, however, two sprouted up to tell her she was a stupid girl who was only faking her love for tech and her skills to get attention from boys.

As such, Felicity rushed through elementary and high school like a sprinter in the Olympics, desperate to leave Las Vegas behind.

Entering MIT was a huge relief. For the first time in her life, Felicity that she finally found people who understood her. She was relieved that she no longer had to hold herself back. She made her first friend in her roommate and befriended some of the women in her dorm. When the inevitable gaggle of words came pouring out of her mouth, she was not laughed at but was understood and encouraged.

For the first time in a long while, Felicity found contentment.

Unfortunately, it was also in MIT that she met Randy who, for better or worse, changed the course of her life forever.

In MIT, where she worshiped at the altar of science and technology, she was placed on a path to discover that there was more to the world that what the eye could see.

It started as a typical boy meets girl story. One night, Felicity went with some girls from the dorm to watch a lacrosse game. The girls and she hang out after the game where they met some of the players, including Randy. Their group went out for coffee and at the end of the night, he invited Felicity out and asked for her phone number.

Despite feeling excited at being asked out for real for the very first time, Felicity realized that there was something seriously _not right_  about Randy. It wasn’t something he did: Randy was solicitous and perfectly polite. There were no red flags or signs that he was capable of evil. There was just a wrongness about him, a _something_ that Felicity could not put her finger on but made her hesitate.

Felicity went with her instincts and let him down gently. He didn’t reply, just looked at her for few seconds as if he was searching her soul. It freaked Felicity out but he left a couple of minutes thereafter without any arguments.

Unfortunately, Randy appeared outside her dorm room the following day. It was the start of him stalking her and after a full week of such treatment, she tried to get a restraining order. He all but disappeared after that.

Then, Felicity met Cooper and she was the happiest she had ever been, that is, until Randy somehow discovered discovered about her and Cooper.

Randy waited for Felicity and Cooper after classes. In a fit of fury, Randy attacked Cooper, hitting him from behind with a tire jack. He then forced Felicity into his car and drove them into the basement of a ramshackle house about two hours away.

Randy shackled Felicity to an exposed beam. A captive audience, she listened as Randy proclaimed himself to be a self-taught techno-mage. He claimed that he found a fool-proof spell in the deep web that would bind his soul to hers forever. She thought that Randy was crazy as he began chanting in a language long dead and didn’t hesitate to tell him so. She was trying to buy time, knowing that Cooper would be able to track her because of the cellphone in her pocket. However, in the middle of Randy’s incantation, she lost consciousness.

When Felicity awakened, she found both Randy and Cooper lying prone at her feet. She shouted for them to wake up, to open their eyes, but she knew in her bones that they were both no longer alive. She did not know how long she was there; all she knew that when she and the corpses of the men were found by the baffled police, her voice had long been hoarse due to her vain attempts to scream for help. Her wrists were battered and bleeding in her desperation to free herself.

It took her months to recover, longer still to resolve to move on from the incident. Felicity took the time to mourn the loss of the first boy she loved while she went through the motions of getting her degree. Later, she accepted an offer of an entry-level job in Starling City and slowly rebuilt her life.

She thought that was the end of the matter, until Malcolm Merlyn's Undertaking revealed that curses were real, that Randy had cursed her, and that the curse worked. It saved her life, and the lives of countless others, even as it shattered her heart.

She was doing laundry in the basement of the apartment building at the edges of the Glades when the man-made earthquake hit. She thought that she was going to die buried in rubble when the ground tore into two. Felicity thought that her life was beginning to flash before her very eyes when Cooper crawled out of the hole that opened.

Cooper was alive, but he was not. Cooper, dressed in the suit his mother chose for him to be buried in, shuffled towards Felicity and used his body to shield her from the falling debris. And after the earth stopped shaking, he started to dig himself and her out of the building. It was only then that Felicity noticed that Cooper was not the only creature that had crawled out of the hole. About twenty other not quite humans were also there; digging themselves, and the other survivors they met along the way, out of the building that was leveled.

And when it was over, when she was safe, Cooper touched her face in goodbye before returning to the ground, following the other undead.

The Undertaking brought Felicity to the attention of ARGUS, a shadow government organization that investigated and dealt with the paranormal accordingly.  
  
ARGUS deemed her as a low-level threat that did not even merit the attention of its head, Amanda Waller. This was fortunate for Felicity because Waller only saw people either as an asset or as a threat: an asset was recruited into ARGUS either voluntarily or through an explosive chip in the head while a threat was summarily eliminated.

It was the ARGUS's second-in-command, Lyla Michaels, who was sent to investigate the unnatural earthquake that all but destroyed the poorest section of Starling City and to check the veracity of reports that zombies were the first response team that arrived to help the Glades.

Lyla's investigation brought her to Felicity Smoak.

One look and Lyla Michaels knew that Felicity would not be a good fit with ARGUS. Lyla broke protocols and chose instead, to introduce the young traumatized woman to John Diggle.

If there was one good thing that emerged from Felicity's ordeal with Randy and, by extension, the Undertaking, it was John Diggle.

It was Dig who explained to Felicity that the stories used by parents all over the world to scare their children had basis in truth, that there are things in the world that could not be explained by science, that there were only a few things standing between the world and the mystical, and that one of those was Dig and his family.

Descended from a long line of slayers, Dig dedicated himself to the family business—the thankless job of saving the world by ridding it of the monsters that wanted to destroy it.

Taking pity on the poor, shell-shocked girl, Dig took Felicity under his wing. At first, Dig reached out to his contacts in an attempt to break Felicity's curse. When all efforts spectacularly failed, Dig started training Felicity, not only physically but also mentally, preparing her to cope with her condition. He also promised her that he would do everything in his power to find a way to break the curse. In return, Felicity offered Dig her technological prowess and aided him in his family quest.

The curse notwithstanding, Felicity felt that she had finally found her purpose: helping to keep the world safe. Well, her job was mostly sitting in the bunker as the Slayer's tech support where the most danger she was in was catching a cold because of the low temperature needed to keep her tech in the best working condition possible. It was only rarely that Dig needed an extra pair of eyes and hands on the field when Felicity was forced to leave the safety of her ergonomic computer chair.

Among such missions was the one that had Felicity currently crouching in a corner of a damp cell, hoping like hell that no one remember that one blonde former I.T. girl was in the room with them.

The mission was a favor for Lyla: to investigate one of HIVE's laboratories. HIVE, a private organization with a mysterious but definitely nefarious purpose was on ARGUS's watch list for conducting experiments coalescing the scientific with the mystical. Because of an outbreak in South East Asia involving what may or may not be of the vampiric persuasion, ARGUS was constrained to subcontract the HIVE laboratory to Lyla’s favorite consultant.

Even after half a year of being Dig's partner in the slaying business, the things Felicity encountered in the field never failed to surprise her.

She had seen vampires, dwarves, elves, and ghouls, usually through her high tech, very expensive computer monitors.

Now, she's with Starling City's infamous son who purportedly drowned at sea a little less than six years ago. But that was not even the surprising part. What caught Felicity unaware was that Oliver Queen, who had been one of the prisoners kept by HIVE, transformed into a huge wolf right before her very eyes.

“Um, Spartan,” she whispered to the communicator inside her ear as she watched in fascinated disgust as Oliver the Werewolf literally bit off the head of one HIVE soldier and swiped the other with its lethal paws.

“I'm on my way.” Diggle replied, there was a pause then the sound of flesh hitting flesh followed by a gunshot. “Hold on a little longer for me.”

The remaining HIVE soldier let out an inhuman scream right before Oliver the Werewolf used its claws to tear him into two.

“Overwatch!” Diggle roared from the comms. “Status report!”

“I'm alright.” Felicity whispered, assuring him as she took a couple of steps backward to dodge the blood spatter. “I think.” She added when the werewolf, now bereft of other people to attack, turned around to face her. “Uh, nice wolf?”

“Did you say wolf?” Diggle asked incredulously.

“Short for werewolf.” Felicity confirmed in a whisper. In her desperation to look at anything other than the militated bodies around her, she met the eyes that of the beast. “Dig,” she whispered. “There’s a werewolf in front of me, another phrase I never thought I’d ever say in my life.”

The beast stalked towards her. It stopped right in front of her and dropped to its haunches. It let out a whine when Felicity froze in inaction.

“Nice wolf,” she repeated. “Please don't bite me.”

The wolf's head moved up and nudged Felicity's hands, which were gripping her tablet like a lifeline.

“What?” She asked the beast.

“I'm almost there.” Dig declared from her headseat.

Once again, the wolf's head bumped Felicity's hands and whined.

Hesitantly, Felicity freed one hand and gingerly touched the top of the wolf's head. The wolf moved encouragingly. When Felicity started to scratch at its head like she would a dog, the creature started panting in satisfaction.

“Spartan?” She whispered. “I think it likes me.”

“I'm here!” Dig declared and Felicity heard him both through her earpiece and in real time.

Seconds later, Dig burst into the cell.

Quick as lighting, the wolf turned on Dig, growling.

“No!” Felicity cried out as she leaped and wound her arms around the canine's neck.

Dig stared at her, aghast.

Felicity's attention was only on the wolf. “Dig's a friend. He's here to help us.” To distract the beast, Felicity started scratching its neck.

Satisfied that there was no danger, the wolf let out a quiet woof and leaned heavily against Felicity who still had her arms around it.

Then, before Felicity's and Dig's eyes, the wolf started shifting until Felicity found herself with her arms full of a very naked Oliver Queen.

“Hi,” he smiled at her.

“Um, hi.” She couldn't help but smile back.

Dig cleared his throat, pulling Felicity back to reality and reminding her that she was all but atop a strange and very naked man.

Felicity reddened and quickly moved away.

“Is that—” Dig asked.

“Oliver Queen.” He introduced himself to Dig. “You're her backup?”

“John Diggle, Slayer.” Dig told him. “You're a werewolf?”

“Was that what I was?” Oliver grimaced.

“Maybe we could table this discussion later,” Felicity butted in. “When we're in safer grounds.”

Dig nodded and turned to Oliver. “Can you manage?”

Oliver nodded and made his way to the corpse that lost its head and began unbuckling its belt.

Felicity felt her stomach perform somersaults. “I'll just wait for you outside.”

“No!” Oliver immediately snapped. Then, in an abashed tone, “I can’t keep you safe out there.”

Felicity’s eyes widened.

“Do your thing, man.” Dig told him. “I'll keep her safe.”

Oliver looked at Dig and at Felicity before giving a reluctant nod.

“What the hell happened?” Dig asked Felicity once they were outside.

“I don't know. One moment I was rescuing Oliver Queen, then the next thing I know, a werewolf was rescuing me.” Felicity replied.

“Werewolves are rare and reclusive, preferring to stay in isolated places with their pack.” Dig mused. “I wonder how Oliver Queen, who was a tabloid fodder all those years ago, was able to hide something like this.”

“Maybe he was bitten or something when he was older.” Felicity posited. “That's why he disappeared five years ago.”

“That's one of the things the movies got wrong.” Dig shook his head. “Weres are born and not made. It's genetic, not a disease you could pass around.”

“This was the first time I turned into that thing.” Oliver told him, walking out of the cell wearing too tight pants and shirt. It was splattered with blood, but beggars could not be choosers. “I had been stabbed, gunned down, tortured, and beaten down, but I had never been bitten, not by a wolf or a human." He paused, grinned wickedly. "Well, not hard enough to break skin, anyway.”

Felicity wrinkled her nose. “Oversharing!”

“It seemed pertinent to the discussion.” Oliver grinned.

“You mean you never transformed until today?” Dig frowned. “If your transformation was HIVE-induced, we have bigger problems than what ARGUS originally thought.”

“I was able to download the contents of their hard drive into my tablet.” Felicity told him. “We’ll know what they know.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the loud shrieking of an alarm.

“Let's figure it out after we make it out of here.” Dig told them. “Let's go!”

Unfortunately, they met with a lot of armed soldiers a few meters into their escape.

“Turn back!” Dig ordered, but his order was in vain as another group of soldiers blocked their retreat.

“We got you surrounded!” A soldier shouted from behind them. “Surrender!”

Oliver growled. Then frowned. Then looked like he was constipated.

“Are you trying to shift?” Felicity asked him.

Oliver nodded.

“And?” She pressed.

“Nothing.” He admitted, frustrated.

Felicity looked at Dig meaningfully.

“Felicity,” Dig whispered. “Are you sure?”

Felicity nodded. “It's time to call for reinforcements.”

Oliver looked at Felicity who had a look of intense concentration on her face.

At first, nothing happened.

Then, the stench hit Oliver first: the stomach-turning smell of rotting flesh.

The smell was followed by the trembling of the ground, which slowly opened.

“What’s going on?” Oliver asked them. “What’s the plan?”

Just as the HIVE soldiers raised their arms to aim at the escapee and the interlopers, a hand reached out from the hole in the ground.

“What the hell?”

A human man crawled out from the hole. It took Oliver a while before Oliver realized what was wrong with the man: he was decomposing. His skin was an unhealthy shade of gray and his clothes were soiled and torn.

Oliver’s hand holding the gun jerked, aiming at the undead even before his head was able to process the scene before him.

“Don’t shoot.” Dig told him under his breath. “And whatever you do, do not make any sudden movements. In fact, don’t move if you can help it.”

“Is that,” Oliver’s jaw dropped open. “A zombie?”

“No.” Dig replied, slowly lowering his gun. “Zombies. Not just one.”

True enough, the zombie was followed by several others. They crawled out of the hole, one after the other, until they outnumbered the HIVE Agents. Oliver noted that majority of the zombies were wearing torn and dirty scrubs, unlike the one he donned while in captivity.

To Oliver’s surprise, the zombies placed themselves between him and his two companions, as if protecting them from the HIVE Agents. 

“What the hell is that?” One of the agents demanded as the zombies slowly advanced towards them. The agents then opened fire but the zombies simply absorbed the bullets and continued walking towards them.

Once the first zombie reached an agent, it lunged and tore her from limb to limb. It bashed the agent’s head on the ground until it cracked open. It then feasted on her brains.

Oliver, Dig, and Felicity watched in horrified silence as the zombies ate HIVE brains, decimating them one by one.

“What happens when they run out of agents to kill?” Oliver asked softly.

“Depends if they’re still hungry.” Felicity replied wincing when two pairs of incredulous eyes turned to her. “Kidding. I hope."

After what seemed like forever, the zombies finished destroying their enemies, they turned as one towards Oliver, Dig, and Felicity.

Oliver moved to aim his gun but Dig grabbed his arm to stop him.

“Don’t move.” Dig whispered.

As one, the zombies let out an unholy groan, then they shuffled awkwardly down the hole they came from.

All but one, that was.

The remaining zombie shuffled closer towards Felicity who didn’t look even the tiniest bit afraid.

“Felicity?” Oliver looked at her for direction, alarmed.

“It’s fine,” she told him, but her eyes never left the zombie’s. Then, to the zombie, she murmured. “Thank you for saving me. Again.”

The zombie jerked, seemingly giving a nod. It then turned around and shuffled back to the hole it crawled out from.

“I miss you.” She whispered to the empty ground.

  
When the last of the zombies disappeared into the ground, Oliver turned to his companions.

“What the hell was that?”

 

* * *


End file.
